The Scottish Nationalists, who took power in Edinburgh last month, have wasted no time in turning their attention to higher education. Last week they announced they would scrap the graduate endowment. And, as Alex Salmond and colleagues focus on the wider issues surrounding universities' funding and the anomalous relationship with the rest of the UK, the professor in their midst will have plenty to say.

Chris Harvie, elected as a nationalist member of the Scottish parliament on the regional list for Mid Scotland and Fife, is also a tenured professor in the German university of Tübingen, and has had years of involvement in higher education in the UK.

Harvie stood for the constituency of Kirkcaldy, part of the parliamentary seat held by Gordon Brown (who once jointly penned a pamphlet with Harvie with the stirring title The Scottish Assembly and Why You Must Vote for It). Despite Harvie's trudging round the housing estates of the town, Labour won. Harvie secured his seat on distributed votes under Scotland's proportional system and, somewhat breathlessly, has fetched up in the ultra-modern offices of the Scottish parliament at Holyrood, to practise what he has preached since converting from Labour to the SNP in 1988.

Harvie is a historian, but he's also a transport expert and regional studies specialist who has written about political novels. Ask him the most expeditious way of journeying by rail from Dovey Junction (he has a house in Aberystwyth) to Edinburgh Haymarket and he will regale you for fascinating minutes, ending with a plug for his pet project of resuscitating the Waverley line, the scenic route that used to carry panting steam trains from Carlisle through Galashiels to the Scottish capital.

His first post in the new parliament is as ideas generator and adviser to the first minister and SNP leader, Salmond. Harvie is unlikely to leave him short of ideas, which tumble out of this most internationalist of nationalists, as he fashions a vision of a regenerated Scotland with - it goes without saying - a lot more trains.

Harvie has spoken out on trams, controversial because the SNP has pledged to stop a new system planned for Edinburgh. But the Green Party supports it, and its votes may be needed to keep the SNP afloat. Such is politics. Professors pontificate; politicians mind their tongues. Harvie may find he has to tone down the pungent blogging he does for the Guardian's Comment is Free website.

In Harvie, Scottish politics has certainly acquired a character. He reminds some people of the literary critic George Steiner, since he can barely open his mouth without dropping the name of some author of high distinction but relative obscurity. The thing is, Harvie will have read the book. Commuting between his base in Swabia, a flat in Islington, work in Scotland and his house in Wales gives him plenty of time.

He is an indefatigable emailer, too. His huge range of contacts is used to enthusiastic reading recommendations, sometimes including his own substantial output.

Unconventional turn

Born 62 years ago to a family of teachers in Motherwell, Harvie went to the famed Royal high school in Edinburgh at the same time as the late Robin Cook, then Edinburgh University, where he completed his PhD on late Victorian liberal thought. He joined the Open University to work with the historian Arthur Marwick, but kept in touch with Scotland, campaigning for an elected assembly. His career took an unconventional turn when he took a German academic job in the old city of Tübingen, teaching British and Irish studies, which allowed him the cross-disciplinary space that suits him.

"I got out of the train one day in 1979 and was charmed by the place. It became my life for the next 25 years. If I had stayed in Britain (and survived the research assessment exercise), I would have taken early retirement at least five years ago. In Germany, I have been able to go on. I've had brilliant students, teaching me many things."

Self-mockingly, Harvie calls his website Intelligent Mr Toad, a sly literary reference to a phrase from George Orwell about toads being under-estimated creatures. He describes himself as "a civic nationalist and greenish republican, continually nagged by Christian socialism".

Deep misgivings about what happened to the proceeds of North Sea oil prompted both his move towards the nationalist camp and a highly regarded book.

He considered returning to work in Scotland - a chair at Stirling University beckoned - but you have a sense that Harvie, for all his passionate love of the country, likes to keep his distance from the often stifling atmosphere of Scottish literary and academic life. Then Salmond phoned him and proffered "an historic challenge": to put his person where his beliefs were and stand for election.

He is due to retire from the Tübingen chair in 2008 and - a tribute to his personality - it will cease to exist when he goes. The university is proving flexible about his political involvement, which he will combine with seminars and postgraduate student supervision.

On the stump

"Campaigning wasn't so new. I've been on the political trail since the 1960s; even thought of aiming for Westminster once. It was fascinating on the stump; encountered rudeness on only one occasion."

As he swaps the lecture theatre for the debating chamber, he muses: "We're a minority government, learning what is possible. We're in a situation where we may cobble together ad hoc alliances on particular issues, where much depends on what happens within the other parties.

"We've quite a university contingent among nationalist MSPs, at least another couple of PhDs. We're beginning to get a different mix from the Labour years; there's a more European feel to things."

He would like to see that trend in universities, arguing for less integration of Scottish institutions into UK systems (such as the research councils) and greater concentration on European connections.

One immediate issue is the fate of the University of Glasgow's Crichton campus in the town of Dumfries, which the university wants to sell off to stem losses. Staff there are lobbying the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council, the Scottish executive and its ministers.

Harvie typically launches into a riff about the town and the history of the campus, a philanthropic gift originally a mental asylum. He is firing off memoranda to the first minister. "Glasgow must not be allowed to stab it in the back," he says. "We should be building up this place as more than a Scottish Hay-on-Wye."

Then he advances a bold vision of a new University of Dumfries, acting as an academic bridge between Ireland and Scotland (Harvie has a book out later this year on the history of the regions bordering the Irish Sea). You couldn't accuse him of thinking small, but what if Scottish parliamentary and party reality is not quite up to his scale?

Curriculum vitae

Age: 62

Job: Member of the Scottish parliament; professor of British and Irish studies, University of Tübingen; honorary professor of history, Strathclyde University